Green Room Serenade

I am finally toward the end of completing grandma's room. If I hadn't been working, then waiting over a week for the trim to be delivered I might have gotten it done sooner. I am a terrible procrastinator though and we are still having no end of problems with the closet...So probably not.

I am also wasting time writing lists and making diagrams and other ideas for how I am going to fit everything I don't cull in to the other side. I have a book dedicated to this, about which Mama said "Oh no you are making PLANS." I don't know what her problem is. Several pages of to-scale diagrams are not obsessive, they are signs of organization or something like that.

Speaking of diagrams I've also become enamored of the idea of buying a new drawing board, but all the nice desktop ones come from the UK and cost like 90 pounds. I decided against a desk as all the split top ones cost lots of money and discriminate against me by having the flat part on the right side only.

Anyway, I have everything painted and most of the trim up, so we can move the furniture back in. As for the paint; my mom and grandma have one notion of colour and I another. Theirs being pale and wan versions of white and mine being, well colour:



I have wanted to paint that back room green for quite awhile, and now that it is two rooms I said I didn't care what was done with my side as long as it was green (which was a lie as the Book of Plans attests, but that was the paramount part of the plan even when I thought I was going to be able to have the whole room-as the Book of Plans also attests). Grandma who is not here at the moment will hate it but that's just too frickin bad.

Mom suggested what else but pale pale green. I countered with whining. What's the point of picking a colour if all I have to choose from are variations of white non-colours? We had the same argument when my own bedroom was built years ago. I had wanted blue and to my mother that meant bluish white. To me it meant blue. People would look and say 'hey your room is blue" blue. Granted both of these rooms are now impossibly small (8 ft and 5 ft) and if I'm being honest, the colours, even though they are not overly dark, do tend to overwhelm. Still I like to see real colours and that is what I have gotten. Now the whole house is shades of white with the exception of the rooms that I have involved myself in...
Dad always said that too many colours got you a Ukrainian house. Well they did give us perogies after all how bad could a Ukrainian house be?

Here you can have a look into the off-whiteness of Grandma's room, which should make us both happy.

The WORST

My brother finally managed to get down here and work on the back room (now rooms). Though he did the bulk of the work, he had to go back home before the mudding of the drywall was done. So I get to finish sanding.

This is how I feel about sanding drywall:

He was trying to say that mudding beads is messiest. WTF-does this look neat and clean to you? No I'm not a professional, but I've helped put up the drywall in almost every room of this house and I know for a fact the sanding is the WORST part. Bar none.
This was at about two in the morning (as I did the sanding after working an evening) and it was still about 30 degrees in there. It REALLY sucks when you are sweating so much that the drywall dust is turning back into mud as it hits your body.
And of course there was dust everywhere. Look at the drywall dust behind me! I had it in my hair, on my eyelashes and up my nose for heaven's sake.

And now I get to do it all over again. Bah.

Mine!

In his lecture on the background of the British drawing collection owned by the National Gallery, the curator who originally put this exhibit together reminded the audience that all of the drawings belonged to the people of Canada. So I already own a CRM-I just have to share it with 30 million other people. I don't know why they wouldn't let me get my time's worth out of it at by keeping it at my house for awhile.

Okay I didn't steal it, but I did buy the retrospective book that went with the exhibit, and by posting this picture from that am likely violating copyright so I'm still breakin the laaaawww.

At the time this was painted, the Mackintoshes careers were in the tank. While architectural and other design were abandoned, Charles focused on serene landscapes and continued doing his beautiful, painstakingly detailed flower paintings. I was reminded of the famous quote from a lecture he gave:

Art is the Flower...Life is the Green Leaf.
Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious, more beautiful-more lasting than life itself.

I was so drawn to the cartouche, which he inscribed with his own and Margaret's initials in pencil.

The Salon itself was interesting. They had organized lectures, a piano performance (Mama and I only recognizing the most common of the four pieces he did-Clair de Lune-since we are part of the unwashed masses), a rather amusing tableau in which the performers re-created one of the paintings, and a poetry reading. All of these were interspersed with periods for conversational circles relating to various subjects. The major complaint I had was that the conversational circles were almost impossible to join in because we couldn't hear a thing. I tried very hard to hear the fellow who was involved in the work with the synchrotron, but to no avail.

At least we got booze and food-totally the redeeming part for mama. :-P She said it was just like all the functions she used to go to with dad; she had no idea what the hell they were on about half the time.


Here is what 100 of my dollars looks like. Why do art books always have to be so expensive? I think someone is trying to keep them from we unwashed masses or some such thing. Okay and they have lots of pictures-and colour ones at that.
I had to go back the next day and buy the book as the gift shop was closed during the Salon, then went back a third time and bought the Lanigan collection book. Since admission is by donation, I visited my favorite pictures-and especially the CRM-every time. :)
I didn't buy them at once was because I didn't think I could really afford both until mama the buying enabler got involved and told me to go back for the one on the left. Though both exhibits were beautiful, some of my favorites were from the Lanigan collection (he is reported to own the most impressive personal collection of PRB and related works in the country).


This one does however partially belong to me:

This is a detail of a large and meticulous pen sketch by David Wilkie chronicling a visit to Scotland of George IV. I just love this guy, he's all "who gives a rip about that fatarsed German king? Don't these people know if it's not Scottish it's crrap?!"